Platform Crisis: The Lazy Dinosaur

After reliance on isolationist development using proprietary technologies, and embracing the suffocating tentacles of long term legacy support the third factor of platform crisis involves turning into a lazy dinosaur. Here’s how both Apple and Microsoft lost their way in a rapidly changing global climate.

Platform Death Match introduced the difficulty of launching a new platform and the work involved in maintaining one. This series looks at the historical march of computing platforms, to sort out why winners won and why losers lost. While the computing environment is always changing, the same basic rules are in effect today, and will shape the future developments between Mac OS X Leopard and Windows Vista.

•1980-1985: 8-bit Platforms Apple II, III, CP/M, IBM PC and DOS
•1985-1990: 16-bit Graphical Computing The Mac, Apple IIGS, Commodore Amiga, Atari ST, and NeXT
•1990-1995: The Race to Deliver the Next New Platform IBM and Microsoft partner on OS/2.
•1990-1995: Hitting the Wall Apple's difficulties in updating the Mac.
•1990-1995: NeXT, Be, and the Mac PC Contenders to the Mac throne.
•1990-1995: The Rise of Windows Apple takes a nap while Microsoft builds an empire.
•1990-1995: Apple vs. Microsoft in the Enterprise The forgotten failure of PowerTalk.
•1990-1995: Why the World Went Windows The smart strategies and dirty tricks used to establish the PC.
•1990-1995: Planting Software Seeds How Apple and Microsoft tended their platforms.
•1990-1995: Platform Crisis Meltdown Isolationist, proprietary developments at Apple and Microsoft.
•1990-1995: The Secrets of Pink, Taligent and Copland Apple tries to modernize.
•1990-1995: Platform Crisis: The Tentacles of Legacy Balancing past compatibility with future technology.

1990-1995: Platform Crisis: The Lazy Dinosaur

Throughout the early 90s, Apple lacked a clear direction for delivering new technology. The company was certainly not out of ideas; it just wasn’t focused on turning them into new, marketable products.

Apple was rich, and it was making significant revenues from high margin sales of its Macintosh computers, the only affordable, mainstream graphic workstations available.

In 1990, Apple was positioned on top of the world, with 9% of the market for personal computers, a clear lock on many of the most profitable market segments, and increasing sales and market share.

The company rode a huge wave of growth tied to desktop publishing and graphic design, and was preparing for another surge from multimedia development built upon QuickTime.

While finishing work on System 7, Apple described its vision for the future in Pink, a set of vaporware ideas that planned to deliver all the features offered by NeXTSTEP on the Macintosh.

Apple had signed an agreement with NeXT that pushed its new rival into the high end of the market, buying Apple time to build volume sales. Apple's plan for the 90s was to increase market share by offering cheaper machines that could better compete in price against PCs running the new Windows 3.0.

To offer cheaper Macs, Apple dug into the past and unearthed old technology to resell in the $1000 to $2000 price range where most consumer PCs were.

High end PCs were the same price as high end Macs, but Windows was so far behind the Mac that four year old Macs were still worthy competitors on the low end.

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This Series

Tech: The Rise and Fall of Platforms